Blood & Fury
by ravenhaired
Summary: A snippet of Elaida's bitter life, coupled with numerous regrets and vulnerabilities, inside the White Tower. Her musings on the nature of Aes Sedaihood and how, in the end, it isn't that much different from being without saidar.
1. Blood

**_Blood  
_**  
**_Disclaimer:_** I don't own the Wheel of Time.  
  
**_Authors Note:_** Darker than usual. Slash and incest. Angst, bordering on a lemon.

Blood was trickling down my leg in soft rivulets. I touched it, fascinated, as it wet my fingers. Even after all these years, after the oaths, after placing the stole on my shoulders, I still bleed. Curious.  
  
We Aes Sedai set ourselves apart from the others. Hold ourselves a notch higher, a tad better than the others. Yet this is the proof we are not. We still bleed, as the clerks do, as the Queens do, as the whores do.  
  
Our undergarments still stain, as do our bedclothes.  
  
Even I, the Amyrlin Seat, bleed. I think many would have it think that we are detached, feel no emotion, and are content to pull people on puppeteer's strings. As if, we have no other joy in life.  
  
The blood shows something else. We are still young. Odd that Aes Sedai are so afraid of old age. Old age lasts longer for us, there is no sweet release after the long years. We keep going.  
  
An old and venerable maid. A curse. Respected in the Tower, yet still a curse in its own way.  
  
Absently, I trailed one finger across my lips, tasting. Bitter, metallic yet tangy. Blood mixed with other intimate liquids, I suppose.  
  
I once tasted Eirana like this. She took great delight in smearing it all over me, in rubbing herself up and down my thighs, across my stomach, across my arms and breasts and cheeks. I lay motionless under her while she done it.  
  
She was aching for me to taste her. I didn't, for a long time. I made her cry for want of it. I did, eventually, of course, when the sun was touching the sky and the blood was caking and drying on my skin. My tongue had barely flicked in when she cried out and came hard, gripping the bedclothes with bloodied fingernails.  
  
I came a matter of seconds later, which surprised me. I found the blood and seeing her bleed...curious. I found it arousing and repulsive in equal amounts, making an odd tearing sensation inside me.  
  
She loved seeing me bleed. She could watch it trickle down my legs for hours, licking it off. She would take me numerous times the nights when I bled; making me, sleep without the protective belt that saved bedclothes from stain, my crotch against her buttocks when we slept so the blood would trickle through her thighs in the night.  
  
When that did happen, we both woke up instinctively. I could feel it oozing out of me and she could feel it tricking through her legs. Sometimes I took her from behind, so aroused was she that she came several times in the space of minutes.  
  
She would turn then, mouth searching for more of the liquid she so adored.  
  
"What are you doing?" She whispered softly from behind me.  
  
Sucking on my finger, I replied, "Thinking," I was sitting on the end of my bed, legs spread slightly.  
  
She came around to face me, watching me. She studied me intently, sitting down on the floor, crossing her legs under her. Her eyes followed one droplet of blood. She bit down on her lip. "About what?"  
  
"The Tower,"  
  
"Oh," She was still watching me. Slowly, very slowly, she began to inch forward, eventually pressing her nose into the inside of my thigh, sighing softly.  
  
I watched her head between my legs, dark hair becoming even darker as it mingled with my blood and dampened.  
  
She kissed the inside of my thigh, not quite biting it. I think the preoccupation with blood is a remnant of the old days. She could not bring herself to draw blood; this was the only blood she could – or would – ever taste.  
  
She began to kiss her way up my thigh, whispering soft words that I barely listened to. "Light, Elaida, light..."  
  
Watching her, I was reminded of my sister.  
  
My sister.  
  
Nerena is like Eirana. Seductive, rebellious.  
  
My sister was...strange. Even stranger than me. She drove my brother from home with scandals that helped my mother die. My father took her side. He always would. Probably because she was doing with my father what she was doing with my brother.  
  
My eldest sister tried to protect me. I was the youngest and largely unaware of what was going on. While I was playing with my dolls, my brother and sister where taking each other in the next room.  
  
When my brother left, Nerena turned her attention to me. I was thirteen when she kissed me. Fourteen when she made love to me.  
  
I did not resist. I had grown up with spotting my brother and sister pressed up against walls and in the stables. This was normal and Nerena was beautiful.  
  
My mother, ill and suffering after my brother's scandals, was, if possible, even more disgusted. My eldest sister told her. Servants broke into the room, dragging my sister off me.  
  
Not long after that, my mother died and I went to the Tower.  
  
I reached out and touched her hair. Her eyes darted up at me. She was sucking now. I leaned backwards, staring up at the ceiling, head flung back, arms stretched out, supporting my upper body. I was trembling, moaning softly.  
  
I came in her mouth, my blood and juice trickling out the corners of her mouth. I leaned forward, tipping her head up and kissing her. It's strange to taste yourself off somebody else's lips. Not unpleasant – tangy, unique.  
  
She smirked and pulled herself up to sit on my right knee, straddling me. She pushed me backwards onto the bed, crouching atop me. I leaned upwards, reaching for the buttons along the back of her dress. I pulled it down to her waist, trailing my fingers up and down her sides and across her stomach. I might have given her the slight scar there once. I touched my lips to her nipples, which where hardened already.  
  
She exhaled sharply, leaning downwards, closer to me, gripping my shoulders until I was sure they where bruised. I levered my knee between her thighs, rubbing her through the fabric of her dress. The fabric was becoming wet with ever stroke of my knee and her breathing was becoming ragged, coming out in short, irregular gasps.  
  
I tugged the rest of her dress off. Eirana never wore undergarments. As an Accepted, when she had first cornered me against a wall and had masturbated against my leg (something that had stunned me to silence at the time), I found this bewildering. Even my sister had worn undergarments. Yet Eirana, when questioned about this, had smiled and said she 'enjoyed a healthy breeze about her privates'. When I tried this, I found the breeze provided a constant state of arousal – probably why Eirana loved it so much.  
  
Nakedness was something Eirana enjoyed so much more than me, even as she crawled up to give me better access. Sometimes I wondered where she got these ideas. Once, when she was licking melted chocolate from my stomach, she explained that it was how she was born, how she lived and how she intended to die. It must be peculiar to be Eirana. To be constantly on the brink of near-insanity. Sometimes, when her eyes glittered intensely and she bit down hard, I wondered what she was capable of.  
  
She came without much prompting. Eirana always did. There was not much of a challenge with Eirana, never any subtleness, always-blatant sexuality. Sometimes I detested that.  
  
Later, Eirana murmured that she loved me, kissed my forehead, rolled over and went to sleep. I hated when she told me she loved me; she knew I would never say it in return. She was like a puppy, hoping for a bone that she would never get.  
  
I stretched out, again examining the blood that now made a red stain on my bedclothes. I absently reached out to touch a piece of caked blood on Eirana's side.  
  
"Mother?" That was Alviarin, at the door.  
  
"Yes, Keeper?" I asked vaguely.  
  
"Mother – there are papers for you to sign,"  
  
I sat up. Eirana stirred, but didn't wake up. "I'm coming,"  
  
I dressed and left.

**_The End_**


	2. Fury

Fury

Disclaimer: I don't own the Wheel of Time

I get so angry sometimes. Furious at something that seems so small, so irrelevant. So angry I need to hit something, to lash out, to crush something with my fist, to throw something just to hear the always-satisfying crash and feel the shattered glass below my fingers.

Pain seems to dull the anger. Wine does, too, but nothing is so effective as pain. Glass pressed hard at the base of my palm, an inch or less above where the vein pumps that keeps my life safe. I wonder what it would be like to cut that vein, to feel the life drain out of me, to be weak and helpless.

I don't ever remember being weak. Even when I was a child at my mother's breast, I was strong. Even when Nerena took me from behind, making me feel pain for the first time, I was strong. I persevered until the pain was pleasure, as she had promised it would be.

I wonder what it would be like to be weak, to be meek. To be what I despise. Would I be any happier? I don't know. Nothing infuriates me more than making a Novice cry. To see them sobbing. I could hit them. Kill them, even.

I know I could kill. I often wanted to kill my father. When he took Nerena away from me – when he made her spend the night in _his_ bed, between him and my mother, whom he always made sure was in ailing health.

She enjoyed it, she said, sitting cross-legged on my bed, dress-half open, moving a game-piece on a board.

I was naked, I remember. "Why?" I asked curiously, as I rolled the dice, moving my piece two spaces.

"Its exciting," She told me, with an amused smile. "Mother is lying there and he's inside me, and we're trying to be quiet..." She let out a long breath, eyes closing slightly. "You wouldn't understand, Elaida,"

"I think I do," I didn't, of course. He was a man, for one thing. And he was our father. Our own flesh and blood...at the time, I didn't know why that repulsed me so much. It didn't seem to bother her or my father. It was normal, I thought, it was_ I_ who was strange.

When I came to the Tower, I realised how abnormal my family truly where.

"They _what_?" Merean asked, eyes going very, very wide.

"Make love to each other," I replied calmly, hands folded in my lap. That was the only expression I could think of. Anything else was vulgar, after all.

Merean's lips moved silently for a moment, until she came around the desk and enveloped me in a strong, bear hug that pulled me from the chair.

Eirana laughed at it, of course. "I knew you noble folk got up to all sorts behind closed doors," She said, mirth in her eyes. She was a pig farmer's daughter.

Even now, thinking back, my hand clenches around broken glass of a shattered goblet, tearing the already scarred-skin on my hands. Pain flashes through my fisted hand, yet I squeezed tighter, urging all the pain to overwhelm me, daring it to make me weak, to make me sleep dreamlessly for a time.

Its agony, of course, already tender skin torn again.

Has Alviarin made me weak? The thought is so sudden that I almost loosen my grip. To be made weak by another person...I clench tighter, to defuse the anger.

"Elaida!" The voice is so shocked, so stunned, I turn in surprise.

Eirana, framed in the doorway, horror on her face. Once she would have appreciated. Once she would have asked me to continue while she watched. Yet now she strode forward, bare feet stepping aside broken shards, nightgown loosely wrapped about her shoulders, gently taking my hands in her own.

"Your hand...oh light..." She pried it open, staring down at the broken glass I had clenched in my fist, rivulets of blood running down my elbow, staining my green silken robe. She looked up quickly at me, and then looked down, using the cuff of her gown to dab at the wound. Little good it did. There was too much blood.

"Why do you do this?" She said in a soft, mild, almost conversational tone, the only way I could tell she was angry was by the fierce way she dabbed, stabbing it, causing almost as much pain as squeezing the glass had.

I hissed.

She looked up, eyes furious. "Don't you _dare_ tell me this hurts,"

"Of course not," I replied calmly.

She shook her head angrily. "I don't understand you,"

I smiled. "No one does,"

She slapped me quite hard. Enough to make my head snap around and gasp slightly. "You are such a fool," She told me.

She turned then and headed back to the bedroom, not looking around. I stood there, staring after her, before slowly following, trailing my feet.

It was dark in the bedroom and Eirana was curled up on the bed, her back to me, blanket pulled up, yet her bare shoulders still showed. She had discarded her robe on the floor. I dropped mine beside it.

"Eirana," I said.

Eirana didn't respond.

"Eirana," Now my voice was wheedling, pleading.

She still didn't respond. I climbed onto the bed, gently touching her shoulder. She stiffened slightly. I lay down beside her, wrapping one arm around her, pulling her in so I was hugging her from behind.

I kissed her ear and buried my face in her hair. I could feel her breath, warm on my arm. "You're still bleeding," She said after a moment.

"Yes," I agreed.

She kissed my hand gently, running her finger along the length of it. The bleeding was slowing and the wound was beginning to heal. It had begun to ache steadily now, a dull throb. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes,"

"I didn't think you could feel pain now,"

That surprised me. "Why?"

She didn't answer, only turning to face me, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me tightly, pushing her face into my chest. "You worry me too much, Elaida a'Roihan,"

I smiled slightly. She wasn't smiling at all, I knew. She was serious.

She looked up at me and frowned, before kissing me firmly, pushing her tongue into my mouth as though seeking assurance that I wasn't, in fact, dead.

She got all the assurance she needed when I pushed her down and climbed atop her, leaving a dark streak of blood on her shoulder. She smiled then, as I placed dainty kisses the length of her jaw bone, butterfly kisses along her neck.

"So gentle," She muttered, rolling her head to one side. A small smile crossed her face, reaching out to grip my hair.

I didn't answer, leaning back suddenly and she looked up at me curiously. Neither of us where clothed and she raised an eyebrow questioningly.

I touched my hand and then offered it to her. She smiled, amused, and took it, gripping it in her own hands and began to kiss it, smearing blood over my fingers and over her mouth.

She fell back onto the pillow, a satisfied smile on her face. "Almost as good as the other blood," She said quietly.

"Just almost?"

"Yes. Almost," She snaked her arms around my waist and pulled me down, kissing me hard, biting down hard on my lower lip.

She began to rub up and down my sides, trailing her hands over my stomach, and then further, rubbing her hand just over my cunt, not going in.

"I thought I was supposed to be doing it to you?" I muttered, face flushing with heat.

"So did I," She pouted, but slipped two fingers inside, stroking gently. I gasped softly, bowing my head into her neck. She kissed my hair.

It didn't take that much for me to come. It was mild, actually, and a look of disappointment crossed her face as I rolled off her without so much as a gasp. She licked her fingers and propped her head up on one elbow, looking down at me. She touched my cheek with her wet fingers and I turned my head, licking at them. She passed no comment as to why I didn't immediately turn my attentions to her, just wrapped her arm around me and pressed her cheek to mine.

We tried to go to sleep.

The End


End file.
